Tom Karen is best known for his design work on the Chopper bike, Bond Bug and
Marble Run. Now he tells Theo Merz about the direct influence he had
on Apple’s head of design, Sir Jonathan Ive

Tom Karen has been described as ‘the man who designed the 70s’ but, he now reveals, his influence goes much further. His design work includes the Raleigh Chopper bike, the Marble Run game, vehicles such as the Reliant Robin, theScimitar GTE, the Bond Bug and even the Popemobile – plus countless other products familiar to anyone over the age of 30. But he also claims an indirect role in the look and feel of Apple's contemporary suite of gadgets.

Because without Karen, Sir Jonathan Ive, Apple's head of design who is credited with the distinctive aesthetics of the iPhone and iPad, might never have entered the industry.

“I worked with his father [a silversmith who became a design technology teacher and later a schools inspector] on the panel of a design competition for students,” the 87-year-old tells me in the living room of the converted Cambridge townhouse where he has lived for 20 years.

“He got in touch with me a bit later and said, my son Jonathan’s at university in Newcastle and thinking about giving up his industrial design course. Maybe you could revive his interest?”

Karen invited father and son to the Letchworth offices ofOgle, the design company he led from 1962 to 1999, and which this year celebrates its 60th anniversary. “I showed them around, and the outcome was that Jonathan stuck to industrial design and made a huge success of it.”

If the student Jony was impressed by Karen’s work, now the feeling is mutual, with the older designer owning an iPhone, Apple computer and iPad. Asked to explain his design philosophy, Karen gives an answer which will be familiar to any user of Apple’s products. “I worship good form,” he says. “You have to make a product that people want to touch and handle – fondle if you like – whether it’s a radio or a motor car. I think I’m pretty good at making virtues out of necessities; if there is a manufacturing requirement I can turn it into an aesthetic plus point.”

Despite handing over the reins of the Ogle design consultancy company 15 years ago, Karen still talks about his work in the present tense because he has never stopped coming up with new ideas. His house is filled with his most famous designs, alongside the ornaments that he has recently taken to creating: in his studio Otto, the wooden dog that bites a ball when its tail is pulled, sits next to the model for the luxury airplane he still dreams of making.

Holding up the plastic Marble Run on his desk, Karen proudly informs me that his four children and six grandchildren have all played with the toy at one point or another. “It’s been going for 40 years and there are very few toys that do that. Most die after two years because they haven’t got enough play value. But there are still some aspects I would like to redesign for a better version.”

Spending the morning in Karen’s studio is a bit like going to visit one’s favourite grandfather. The situation becomes particularly uncanny for me when I realise that Karen has almost exactly the same background as my own grandfather: both grew up in Jewish manufacturing families in the Czech city of Brno, both left aged 13 at around the time of the German invasion and both speak English with the same German-Czech lilt despite having spent the vast majority of their lives in the UK. But if their paths ever crossed, neither are aware of it.

Karen, who changed his name from Kohn when he was naturalised in Britain, moved with his family first to Belgium, then to France and Spain before ending up in Bristol. He started his career working on aircraft but disliked how much mathematics it involved, so retrained in product design at Central St Martins. He worked for Ford and Hotpoint before taking over Ogle when its founder, David Ogle, was killed in a car accident.

The Raleigh Chopper

Though produced 40 years ago, much of the company’s more famous work still has a cult following. There are online forums devoted to the three-wheeled Bond Bug as well as the Raleigh Chopper bike, an example of which sits propped up against the wall in Karen’s kitchen. “My grandson is becoming very interested in it,” the designer says of the once must-have set of wheels. “Someone should ride it really, it’s not a museum piece.”

He remembers the bike’s heyday fondly but, unlike the marble run, does not believe it deserves a comeback. “It was perfect at the time. Kids loved the gear shift and I put some make-believe springs in the saddle so it feels like being in a big motor car. But you could also say the Chopper wasn’t a very good bike. It was terribly heavy so you wouldn’t want to ride it very far. There was some guy who rode it from Lands End to John O’Groats for a good cause and by the end he was cursing it.”

Before I leave, Karen talks me through his photo albums – though the images are not of his family but his best-known designs and projects he still hopes to get off the ground. The most ambitious is on a much larger scale than even his cult 70s products: a floating city which would protect populations from earthquakes and rising water levels. “It would work very well in Holland or Tokyo. I couldn’t make it myself but I have talked to some people about it.”